from his pile of stones on the
Whunny road; Hendry Robb, the "dummy," had sold his last barrowful of
"rozetty (resiny) roots" for firewood; and the people, having
tranquilly supped and soused their faces in their water-pails, slowly
donned their Sunday clothes. This ceremony was common to all; but here
divergence set in. The grey Auld Licht, to whom love was not even a
name, sat in his high-backed arm-chair by the hearth, Bible or
"Pilgrim's Progress" in hand, occasionally lapsing into slumber.
But--though, when they got the chance, they went willingly three times
to the kirk--there were young men in the community so flighty that,
instead of dozing at home on Saturday night, they dandered casually
into the square, and, forming into knots at the corners, talked
solemnly and mysteriously of women.

Not even on the night preceding his wedding was an Auld Licht ever
known to stay out after ten o'clock. So weekly conclaves at
street-corners came to an end at a comparatively early hour, one
Coelebs after another shuffling silently from the square until it
echoed, deserted, to the town-house clock. The last of the gallants,
gradually discovering that he was alone, would look around him
musingly, and, taking in the situation, slowly wend his way home. On
no other night of the week was frivolous talk about the softer sex
indulged in, the Auld Lichts being creatures of habit who never thought
of smiling on a Monday. Long before they reached their teens they were
earning their keep as herds in the surrounding glens or filling "pirns"
for their parents; but they were generally on the brink of twenty
before they thought seriously of matrimony. Up to that time they only
trifled with the other sex's affections at a distance--filling a maid's
water-pails, perhaps, when no one was looking, or carrying her wob; at
the recollection of which they would slap their knees almost jovially
on Saturday night. A wife was expected to assist at the loom as well
as to be cunning in the making of marmalade and the firing of bannocks,
and there was consequently some heartburning among the lads for maids
of skill and muscle. The Auld Licht, however, who meant marriage
seldom loitered in the streets. By and by there came a time when the
clock looked down through its cracked glass upon the hemmed in square
and saw him not. His companions, gazing at each other's boots, felt
that something was going on, but made no remark.

A month ago, passin